


Lumber

by atbash



Category: Harvest Moon, Rune Factory (Video Games), Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Genre: Gen, M/M, cool aunt mana, i have no clue how old cammy and roy are compared to aria, kyle married jake, lets say theyre ten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atbash/pseuds/atbash
Summary: "If you tell your dad about this, we're all gonna die."Or, Roy and Cammy remember why they stopped playing on Kyle's farm.





	Lumber

Aria gaped at the wreckage in front of them. With a slow voice and a slight lisp, they said, “You guys are gonna be in _trouble_.”

The farm exploded into noise. Roy was lamenting the accident and apologizing profusely while Cammy spoke overtop of him and tried to reason with the four-year old in front of her that really, this wasn’t so bad, couldn’t we just-

“Cammy.” Roy grabbed her arm suddenly, in a quiet panic. “When does Kyle come home?”

Cammy shrugged him off, losing steam as dread settled on her chest. “I dunno.” Her eyes trailed over to where the pile of lumber should be. There were a few logs in place, and that was good, but most of the lumber Kyle had collected had rolled all the way out into his field, making a complete mess of the neat rows and columns. Some had landed in the pond nearby.

“Hey Aria,” Roy spoke with a calm, soft voice. “When do your parents come home?”

Aria was still very interested in the wreckage. They seemed to be studying the mess intently, one meaty hand making its way to their mouth.

Roy tried again as Aria sucked their fingers. “Ri-ri? I need you to tell us when your daddies come home.”

The entire town had taken to calling Aria any sort of nickname they could think of, much to the tot’s chagrin. Now focused completely on the injustice at hand, they put their hands on their hips and pouted. “My name is Aria.” The “r” in Aria sounded more like a “w” when they said it.

“Kiddo, we-“

“You’re right, Aria, I’m sorry.” Roy cut Cammy off. He knew what he was doing. “Can you forgive me?”

Aria smiled shyly, and nodded.

Roy smiled. “Now, can you tell me when your parents are coming home?”

Suddenly enjoying the attention, Aria made a big deal about tapping their chin and saying _hmmm._ Roy waited patiently.

“Father said,” Aria started with a big breath, “that he was gonna help out Auntie Tanya at the forge, and then he came back home to make me and Daddy lunch, and then he brought it to Daddy at where the school is gonna be,” Aria recited, twisting their hair with their fingers, “and then they’re both gonna come home when it’s dinner time!”

Their gaze travelled back out over the ruined field and the destroyed crops. “And they both told me to stay on the farm, and to go to the general store if there was any trouble,” they finished somberly.

Cammy bit her lip. “So Jake and Kyle won’t be home until late. We have a few more hours to fix this.”

“Fix this? What are we gonna be able to do?” Roy ran his hands through his hair and scowled. “Why’d you have to go climbin’ on the dumb pile in the first place? Now my mom’s gonna kill me! Really, really kill me!”

“You were both climbing on the pile,” Aria added helpfully. “And I said you weren’t allowed.”

“Kiddo, your dad always used to let us play on his farm. And besides-“

Roy put his head in his hands.

“-no one’s mom is going to kill them, because no one is going to find out. Okay?”

She pointed a finger at Aria. “But the only way this is gonna work is if we all keep this a secret, okay?” She widened her eyes to emphasize just how important this was. “If you tell your dad about this, we’re all gonna die.”

Aria mirrored Cammy’s widened eyes and nodded.

Cammy stood up straight. “Right. Now that that’s settled...” She sighed. “Let’s start stacking some lumber.”

 

“You know,” Roy said to Cammy as they each hoisted an end of the fifteenth log they had carried today, “this isn’t gonna fix the problem. We still have to worry about the logs that fell in the water, and we have no way- ow, geez, walk slower, hang on- we can’t fix the crops that got crushed.”

“Roy? Stop talking so much.” Cammy gritted her teeth as she set her end of the log down.

“Cammy, listen. Even if we did somehow get away with this, do you really think Aria’s not gonna tell on us?” He shrugged in the direction of the watering hole, where Aria had decided their efforts would be best spent after “helping” got too boring in the first five minutes.

“Well, what do you want to do about this, Roy? Run away from town? Become a traveling poet? Start running a bathhouse in a faraway village?”

“No, that’s stupid.” Roy hated when Cammy said dumb stuff just to make him feel dumb. “I’m saying we’re going to have to tell Kyle that we messed up his farm. It’s not fair to him.”

Cammy eyed him with a half-smile. “You’re just saying that cause you used to have a crush on Kyle.”

Roy’s face grew as red as the crushed tomatoes under his feet. “Yeah, well, you used to have a crush on him, too, so shut up!”

Cammy laughed and punched his arm. “ _You_ shut up.”

 

An hour before the sun started setting, a voice floated from across the field. “Auntie Mana!”

Cammy gasped and dropped the log she had been holding. Roy held his foot and shared one of his mom’s favorite curse words with the squashed cucumbers.

Mana was having a great day. Her day got significantly better watching two sweaty ten-year olds scramble around on a flat piece of land for a place to hide.

With a grin, she picked up her godchild. “Hey there, Aria. What’s going on here, huh? Cammy and Roy up to no good?” She nodded toward the upper half of the field.

Aria nodded solemnly. “But we can’t tell Daddy they messed up his wood. Otherwise, he’s gonna kill us.”

Mana bit her lip to hide a smile. “I see. Are we allowed to tell your other daddy?”

Crooked baby teeth made Aria’s smile all the more mischievous. “I already did! I went to where the school’s gonna be while Cammy and Roy were pickin’ up the wood they spilled.”

Mana raised her eyebrows. “Oh? And what did he say?”

“Father said- umm-“ Aria put their fingers in their mouth. “He said, ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ with his scary face, but then he smiled, ‘cause he wasn’t really mad. Then he picked me up an’ spinned me around and said he’d be home super super soon!”

“Is that all he said? What did he say about Roy and Cammy?”

Aria shrugged.

“Hmmm.” Mana shifted positions to put Aria on her other hip- they had gotten so big so fast, it seemed like only yesterday Tanya was showing Jake and Kyle how to change diapers- and said, “Well, if you can help me take the shipments, we can go see both your daddies together. How does that sound?”

“Yeah!” Aria wriggled in Mana’s arms and was set down on the ground. “I wanna help.”

Mana bit her lip to smother laughter as Aria very seriously reached into the bin as far as they could without tipping over into it-which wasn’t very far. Together with Mana’s basket, they took Kyle’s shipments back the the general store.

“Auntie Mana?”

“Yeah, Pumpkin?” It had taken a while to find pet names Aria approved of.

“I hafta go potty.”

Mana grimaced. The diaper days weren’t too long ago, after all. “That’s a job for Grampa Douglas, I think. Let’s go see him.”

 

From behind a bush half the size of her body, Cammy whispered very loudly, “Do you think she saw us?”

Roy, who was lying supine and facedown in a plot of unsown land, replied, “...I don’t know.”

“I think she’s gone now.” Cammy cautiously peered over the shrubbery. “Aria, too.”

Roy flopped over and wiped the sweaty dirt off his face. “Okay, that’s it. We’re dead. I accept our fates. Cammy, what prayers are you supposed to say before you die?”

“Roy, knock it off.”

“Can we go ask your dad to do a sermon before we-“

“Could you please stop?” Cammy bit her lower lip to stop it from quivering. “My feet hurt and it’s too hot and I’m hungry and I have so many splinters and right now all I want to do is take a bath, eat three dinners, and go to sleep.”

The sun’s descent cast strange shadows over the fields. Roy reached a hand out, watching as his shadow did the same, at least a yard ahead of him. “You know.” Cammy sat down in the dirt next to him as he spoke. “Whatever Kyle’s gonna do to us for messing up his field, I think we kinda made up for it in suffering already.”

“You sure about that?”

They spun around at the sound of another voice. Another shadow had joined them in the fields- four more, actually. Jake stood, one hand on his hip, glaring down at the two of them.

Cammy covered her mouth. Roy sat up and tried to brush some of the soil off his shirt.

“Hey, guys.” Mana waved to them. “Made any progress since I last saw you?”

“Mana! You told on us!” Roy felt anger rising in his cheeks.

“Actually,” Jake began in a drawl, “my child told on you first.” He squatted down so he was at their eye level. “I just didn’t think it was a high priority issue. You little humans would get your comeuppance for your troublemaking whether I pulled Kyle out of the construction site three hours ago, or if we left at the scheduled time.”

Cammy pouted. Jake always knew just how to make a bad mood worse.

“Plus,” came a third voice, “Aria told their daddy how hard you two were working to fix your mistake. Didn’tcha, Aria?”

Kyle walked over behind his husband, holding Aria’s hand, who was also pulling Mana along.

Aria looked up at their father. “Daddy, you’re not gonna kill us, right?”

Kyle kissed Jake on the head, who reached up to put a hand to his face. “Of course not, sweetie.”

“In fact,” Jake said, standing up, “You two worked so hard putting the lumber back, I can hardly tell anything’s amiss.”

“Really?” asked Roy, confused but hopeful.

As if on cue, the unstable pile Cammy and Roy had created collapsed, logs upon logs rolling back out onto the field. Another landed in the pond.

Kyle winced. Jake sighed. “No, not really.”

Not quite caring who heard her, Mana announced, “I’ll put Aria to bed for you guys. Let me know when you want me gone.” She ignored Aria’s protests and took them inside the old farmhouse.

“Now,” said Kyle, who recognized Cammy’s dangerously-close-to-crying face from past experience and was beginning to see it on Roy too, “It’s late. Jake and I have been working all day, and it looks like you two have, too.”

Roy and Cammy shifted uncomfortably, painfully aware of the sweat and dirt caked on every inch of their bodies.

“So tonight, you two are going to spend some time in the bathhouse and get a good night’s sleep.”

Roy blinked. “What?”

Jake smiled a bit. “What, you thought we were going to put you to work? You two look fit to collapse at any moment. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

Cammy stayed silent, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Besides,” Kyle added, “you’ll need plenty of energy to help me gather lumber first thing tomorrow morning.”

Roy’s jaw dropped. Cammy’s face drooped. Even Jake seemed a bit surprised.

“Gotta replace that ruined lumber somehow, right? Think of it as a field trip.” Kyle’s facial expression betrayed no hint of malice as he placed a hand on both kids’ shoulder. “We’ll supply the axes. Bring a positive attitude and some lunch! We’ll be out in Trieste Forest for a while.”

Kyle wished them good night and pulled his husband into their house.

Cammy glanced at Roy. “Remember what you said earlier about running away from town?”

Roy ran a hand through his sweaty curls. “Pack your bags. Let’s head east. We’ll get as far as we can before morning.”

 


End file.
